CASE STUDIES
: Liberated Films - Web 2.0 Video Sharing Community
Liberated Films is a web 2.0 online film community. The main three goals that the website is focused around are 'Liberating' filmmakers, film enthusiasts, and funding new films. The aim is to provide the users with interesting films that challenges the artistic boundaries placed by mainstream media and entertainment. Liberated Films is designed to be a place for Independent Filmmakers to get exposure and connect directly with their fans. The user can submit the film to the Liberated Films team for review, and if it is good the client publishes it. Liberated Films is a community for people to gain as much exposure as possible. Liberated Films online mechanism is promotional medium that encourages users to promote their work.
There were a number of major challenges that we faced as we started work on the project:
- Unique design: The design was supposed to be created according to detailed design specification developed together with the client, which means that we needed to be very specific and accurate in creating any element of the website design;
- Flash player development: The flash player was supposed to be easily embedded in all the well-known websites like: MySpace.com, Digg.com and etc;
- Admin area changes and further development: The changes for the website should presented using CakePHP framework, a custom developed framework;
- Time constraints: The project had to be delivered in a short time frame, so we had to work against a tight deadline without any quality deterioration.
Challenge
Working in close cooperation with the client, we successfully met all the requirements for the website design and development. We created the custom design that fulfills the modern tendency of the global network, making it user friendly and easy-to-use. Our development team has upgraded the website functionality and changed the existing admin area. As the website deals with huge number of uploaded videos, the client needed the solution how to manage and sort all of them. Our team has added an ability to sort the videos by the numerous categories on the website. Besides the website promotes videos of the non-commercial and independent filmmaker, and we needed to give the client an opportunity to choose the videos that should be displayed on the landing page. A new feature was added to the admin area by our developers that can freely pick certain video from the database and help the client to decide on what video to display. The flash player that is used on the liberated films website was completely created by our team. The client was shown about 5 design versions of flash player; after the final approval was received from the client the team started the development process. One of the requirements was to develop the player that can be easily embedded on any website, blog, user’s profile by copy/pasting the code that is generated at the website. To improve the usability of the player the development team has added several functions that make the usage of the player more convenient like: full screen, volume tab, etc.
Results
The website we developed has a friendly, modern and unique graphic design that helps the user to browse through the numerous categories and video displayed. The users are able to choose any video to watch and using our flash player make it more comfortable. After finding the necessary video or in case the filmmaker want to promote his very own video, the user can post it live in the global network using our embedding code. Our development also simplifies the website and video management for the client, giving the opportunity to add/edit/delete any video, to choose the video that would be displayed on the most important pages of the website like landing page and finally sort all the uploaded videos by the categories.
Customer benefits
- Access to critical technology skills. The customer was able to get access to experienced web 2.0 designers and developers quickly;
- Cost Advantage. The system was developed fully offshore and total costs of the project are 5-6 times lower;
- Maintenance and Further Development. New tasks and changes were deployed without downtime on operational web site;
- Decreased time-to-market. The full version of the website was developed and delivered to the customer in three weeks.
Categories: Web Development, Media and Entertainment, PHP, PERL, Media Streaming, Open Source Solutions, Web 2.0, Social Networking
